Recently my girlfriend and I had been in contact with this school located in Huludao for over a month (Nov-Dec). We had several phone interviews, interaction through e-mail and were just about to sign a contract. Towards the end things started to get weird. The foreign administrator began to get hostile with us. It started to feel like they were doing US a favor and that there was no mutual excitement to work with one another. We were told several times that they were trustworthy but with nothing to back it up. At one point the FAO even accused me of coming on this message board and searching for another job. At one point after the whole msg board fiasco we received another email declaring that they did not think we were sincere enough or that we did not care for children. We literally sent nothing preceding that email to indicate anything negative of ourselves. There were two people we were dealing with, one was "supposedly" a teacher there named (get this) Xiao Lin and the other was Fred the FAO (even though Xiao had FAO in his email address) Basically it was a good cop bad cop routine with Xiao being the good cop and Fred being the bad cop. The worst came at the end where after almost 2 weeks of excuses and push backs we finally received the contract. Right away we were told we had a deadline of less than TWO DAYS to sign the contract. The photos that were to accompany the contract never arrived.

My girlfriend than emailed them asking if she could see photos of the school and apartment. This was followed by and I quote "we feel now that the questions are becoming a bit never-ending". WHAT!?!? Never-ending!?!? I have never heard of a prospective employer saying this before. Especially an employer who is overseas and which I would have to work for over a year with. This was all over the request to see pictures of an apartment, AN APARTMENT! My girlfriend and I were now hesitant and decided to wait for the apartment photos to come in. We "passed" our two days deadline when I received a letter from Xaio telling us the deal was off. He then proceeded to tell us who they had selected and said we had missed a great opportunity. The guy basically emailed my to rub it in our faces! We were relieved to tell you the truth because I'm sure had we decided to go there the trust issues would have been enormous and if there was anger over a photo request BEFORE we even worked for them we were sure there would have been worst problems down the road.

I have recently read on other message boards from this school who basically posts every three months asking for teachers which can only mean that their turnover is great (some not even lasting the semester). I have also noticed that there wages have gone down and there hours have gone up. I really hope no one gets sucked into this cat and mouse game like we did. It was weird two because it was a public school and not a training center. I guess however not all public schools are equal.